Baby and Bugs (Or, What Kind of Monster Does She Think I am?)

Today I had the baby in the bathroom with me while I took a bath. Unfortunately, she was not the only member of the audience. There was also a cricket waiting patiently to hop at me given half a chance. The baby is not a big fan of the insect world so she gave the cricket a wide berth.

Her sisters have pointed out crickets to her and they think it’s funny when she points and says “Ewww! Ewww!” Of course, I think it’s funny as well. She doesn’t act like she is merely repeating her sisters; she seems to be truly offended by the presence of the crickets.

So if I know there is a cricket in the house, I will ask her where the bug is. Then she’ll point, say “Eww!” and generally avoid going anywhere near it. So then I might ask her if she wants to get the bug. Of course she’s horrified at the notion and she’ll say “No!”

After my bath, I was in the kitchen with the baby, fixing her bottle. She was standing a few feet away, bending over by something on the floor. I walked over to see what she had found and it was a cricket. It was on its back and not moving. I think that must have been the reason that the baby didn’t immediately recognize it. I grabbed the flyswatter and all of a sudden it came back to life. The baby stood way back as I escorted, via flyswatter, the cricket out the back door.

After feeding the baby lunch, I cut up a brownie and put it in a bowl for her. She’s generally a fan of anything sweet so I thought she would like it. I didn’t even give any thought to the fact that she had never had a brownie before. I set the bowl on a rug where she likes to sit and eat snacks.

Me- “Look Baby, it’s a brownie for you. It’s good.”
Baby, looks in bowl, chuckles and refuses to get near it again.
Me- “Come eat your brownie. It’s good.”
Baby- “No!” She was also eyeing the bowl with suspicion.

That’s when I realized what was going on. The baby thought I was giving her a bowl full of crickets.

Marin

Marin heard something on the news about Mitt Romney going to New Hampshire and asked, "Who's getting a hamster?"

Because the World Needs to Know

You know how people bore you by telling you about the dream they had? Then you’re all “cool, what happened next?” but really wanting to shoot yourself in the face? Well, I’m sharing it anyway.

It was after spending the evening trying to help Claire with long division. I didn’t enjoy it back when I was in fifth grade and believe me, it hasn’t gotten any better. We did the best we could and I did learn that there are a lot of resources out there that are helpful for parents. For example, there’s one where you plug in the numbers and it not only gives you the answer (that’s the easy part anyway) but it shows you all that crap you’re supposed to have down below. Bottom line, I had to cheat on fifth grade math.

Anyway, after that I was watching 24 on Netflix before bed. I woke up after having this dream that I was making out with Kiefer Sutherland. But he wasn’t there for the making out. In my dream, he had come over to help with the long division. I don’t even know what to say about that.

The Bug Trauma

So, I think I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m not a big fan of bugs. Marin however, thinks bugs are fun. Recently she was playing in the yard and yelled at me to come look.


Marin- “Mommy! Come look what I found!”

Me- “What is it?”

Marin- “It’s a bug! Come look!”

Me, not nearly as thrilled- “Ok, I’m coming.”

Marin- “Look! Look!”

Me, shocked and disgusted- “Oh my God! You have a cicada!”

Marin- “I know. It’s a great bug!”

I tried to be cool about the whole thing since she actually likes bugs but cicadas are scary. I immediately flashed back to the time years ago that my cat caught one and was trying to bring it to me. It was screaming in his mouth and clearly the cat thought he was contributing to the family with the bug present. I had no choice to run as the cat chased me with a bug.

Katie was playing on the trampoline yesterday. It was pretty uneventful until she came back inside all upset.

Me- “Katie, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”

Katie, shaking her head and clearly still shaken- “I was lying down on the trampoline and I thought there was a leaf under my hand. I started crunching in up but it felt funny and it wasn’t a leaf! It was a cicada! Yuck!”

Then I laughed and she rubbed her cicada hand on me. She spent the rest of the evening touching people and saying cicada hands. Marin spent the rest of the evening screaming and running.

Out of the blue, less than an hour after the bug incident, Claire let out a blood-curdling, horror-movie-style scream. She ran to me, still screaming.


Me- “My God, Claire! What happened?”

Claire- “I was picking up a shirt on the floor and I felt something on my hand and it was a CRICKET! It was climbing up right here!”

I swear, I really wanted not to laugh.

The One With No Title

Hello? Hello? Anyone still out there? Is this the time where I make the excuses for not posting? I’m going to skip that part and go ahead and move on to new business, if that’s ok with the one or two loyal readers that I might have left.

Just to catch everyone up on what’s going on here in Pleasantville, my oldest son and his wife had a baby, Cael. He’s four months old now and just perfect. I’m still trying to figure out how to convince everyone that I’m the aunt. I have a hard time with the “G- word.” It makes it difficult to pull off the “I’m 38” lie.

So, now my little girls are all aunts. At 10, 8 and 4. Although Claire was 9 when he was born and Marin was just 3. She still insists “I not AUNT Marin!”

Marin is crazy about babies though. She was a fan of babies before her nephew, but they were just dolls. Now she’s had some up-close interactions with a real baby and she’s hooked.

Marin- “Can we get a baby?”

Me- “Uh, no. I’m pretty much over that.

Marin- “Please! Please!”

Me- “No way. I’m not doing that again. No more babies. Where do you think babies come from anyway?”

Marin- “The baby store? Wait. Do we even have a baby store in this town?”

Me- “Nope. It closed down. Besides who would take care of a baby?”

Marin- “I would. It could sleep with me.”

Me- “Ok, but who would change the baby’s diaper?”

Marin- “Oh, I would do that.”

Me- “What if the baby is poopy?”

Marin- “I don’t care about that. I would change it.”

Me- “Ok, but who is going to feed the baby?”

Marin- “Me! I will do it.”

Me- “What would you feed the baby?”

Marin, thinks for a minute- “Peas!”

Me- “Peas, huh? Do you like peas?”

Marin, clearly disgusted- “No! That’s baby food!”

Enough of that stuff already, because there really should be a limit on cute for any given day.

Three is FUN

You might be surprised by the magnitude of the mess that can be created by just one three year old and just one package of instant oatmeal. I know I was.

Big News

My oldest son, Noah and his wife, Cassie are having a baby! I should let you know something right up front though. By my calculations, that means I'm going to be an aunt. Of course it's the same sort of logic that makes me think I'm also 38....

Triple-Amputee Barbie

So the dog likes Barbie dolls. I can't even bring myself to discuss Ken's fate. Let's just say it wasn't pretty.

This dog stuff is all new to me since I haven't had one for years. My previous dog, Zoie the Akita, was much too dignified to chew anything up. She couldn't be bothered to play with toys- in fact if you threw a ball for her she would simply walk away. Her main concern was finding a sunny spot for napping or worst case scenario, maybe a sandwich to steal.

The dog thing is new enough that the other night I let the dog out in the freezing cold and then promptly forgot I even had a dog. About an hour later I heard some scratching at the back door and still didn't know it was the dog until he stood up at the door, looked me in the eye and begged to come inside.

Marin likes to lead Chase around by his collar and he is usually happy to go with her. Sometimes he's had enough and will try to escape. That's when she likes to close the door to her room and trap Chase, which makes him bark and whine. Which in turn makes Marin cry and yell "He's whistling!" She did that the other day and Chase was desperate to get out, yet again "whistling" and barking.

Me- "You have to let that dog out of your room."
Marin- "But I don't like him out here cuz he isn't coperating!"

Since getting Chase, I now have another list of ridiculous things that I have to tell people not to do. It used to be just the normal stuff like "I told you to stop climbing on the walls!" Now it's really conversations that I never imagined I would be having.

Marin, screaming- "Mommy! Chase ate my fry! Make him spit it out!" Then I have to explain why it's too late for that and why she really wouldn't want to eat it even if I did retrieve it.

Me- "Don't let him eat out of your bowl! He licks his butt!"

Marin responds happily- "He licks me, too!"

Other things have included the following:

Me- "Who left gum out? The dog is now chewing gum!" and my personal favorite "Did you put spaghetti on that dog?"

Yeah, He Could Smell Better Though.....

First of all, I want to share some complaints about daylight savings time. The first day I skipped straight over breakfast and had lunch at 10. I rarely even eat breakfast. There is something very wrong with this time change system when I decide that a fish fillet is a good choice at 10 am. I was making plans for dinner by 3:30 in the afternoon. I’m now officially on the senior’s “early bird special” schedule.

To make matters worse, it took me several days to remember how to reset the clock in my car. As a result I was doing things like leaving the car, walking in the house, noting the time on the stove only to think to myself “fuck, it’s noon again?”

In other news, I adopted a dog. He’s a very nice dog that a rescue group saved from a death sentence at a shelter. The shelter staff had him labeled as dog aggressive since he had barked at other dogs. I don't claim to be an expert but don't all dogs do that? It turns out that not only is he not aggressive but he loves to play with other dogs and kids. It’s not surprising because he is only 18 months old or so.

The guy that was caring for him (Dale) didn’t like the name the rescue group gave him, Baron, so he changed it to Chase. I say that he’s officially Baron Von Chase which sounds very dignified considering the fact that Marin has already been making him wear hats, Little girl hats. He spent five weeks with Dale and has had a fair amount of obedience training. He knows sit, heel, down for starters. He’s also house-trained (YES!)and the girls adore him.

Marin insists that Chase go with her to the potty. She also likes to put his gigantic dog bed right next to her little toddler bed for nap-time. Yesterday afternoon I checked on them only to discover them both sound asleep and Marin had Chase tucked in with a blanket.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not all kittens and unicorns. Katie was upset with Chase for sniffing her legs while she was wearing a skirt. Of course, in her defense, he did have his entire head under her skirt. Claire was displeased when Chase licked the piece of pizza in her hand, and then immediately tried to feed it to Marin. Marin is not a fan of dog spit. She gets upset when she picks up the ball to throw for Chase and discovers that it's wet. Marin was most irritated the first night Chase was here. He kept going to the door and whining.

Marin, addressing the whining dog- “Don’t do that! It’s making me annoying!”

Me- “That’s not what’s making you annoying.”

Marin- “He's doing it again! He have a whistle in his mouth!”

Well, I guess I better hurry up and get started on lunch. I just noticed it’s 11 o’clock again.

Halloween

Some people say that sugar doesn't make kids crazy. Just for the record, they're fucking liars.

She's a Picky One

Claire made a new friend on our street today. She played with him most of the day and was talking about him still when she got home.

Claire- He was born in Russia but he lives somewhere around here now.
Me- How old is he?
Claire- Nine.
Me- So, are you dating now?
Claire- No! We really aren't much alike at all.
Me- Huh?
Claire- I mean, he likes sharks and I like monkeys......
Me- Yeah, I really don't see that relationship going anywhere.

I CAN Predict the Future (sometimes....)

Katie, the difficult child, screaming- Mommy! Claire spit on my pizza! She licked her finger and touched my food!

Me- I guarantee it won't be the only time someone spits on your food.

Mean Girls

Claire's birthday is coming up. She will be nine this year. Birthdays are pretty exciting for the girls and they start planning weeks in advance.

Claire- I'm going to invite Turner and Hannah to my birthday party. For revenge.

Me- Huh? What kind of revenge?

Claire- The kind you can't prove.

Me, talking to Claire- You know, it's never a good idea to start a conversation with "Look what I found in my nose."

Marin Tells her First Joke

I must preface this by saying that Marin is two.

Marin- Knock, knock.

Me- Who is it?

Marin- It's me!

Then she laughed and hugged me.

Me- You are so funny. I love you.

Marin- I lub you, too.

The Free Agent

As you all know, I’ve been neglecting my blog. I didn’t mean to but real life took over for a while. We are planning a large project that includes expanding our kitchen. It sounded pretty simple but then we found out that we don’t need to just move the gas meter but that the gas company needs to move the actual gas line that goes into the house. I’m a bit of a worrier so I’m pretty sure I will keep the kids away from the house that day, just in case they don’t know what they are doing. I’m sure they do but still, I can’t help but worry about them blowing up the house.

One of the other projects I have been working on is stripping the wallpaper in the upstairs hall. It has been there forever but I hate stripping wallpaper because it is usually way more work than I think it will be. This was a rather pleasant surprise- it came off so easily that I’m thinking that it must have gone on in the depression and it was barely glued on. The girls were thrilled to help, even Marin. I swear when it comes to tearing things up they are all masters at demolition. Which brings me back to Marin…

Two year-olds certainly have their charm; with the cute way they say things and their chubby little cheeks. But the things they can get into still surprises me. Let me start by saying that Marin has been moved to a toddler bed. I hate having her out of the crib but she had mastered going over the rail. The last day she was in the crib, she climbed out four times when I tried to get her to nap. Needless to say, she won that battle in that she didn’t take a nap. Come to think of it she also won the war in that she’s now in a toddler bed and for the most part, a free agent. I never know what I’m going to wake up to in the mornings anymore.

A couple of days ago I awoke to someone knocking on the door. I thought that was odd since we have a doorbell. Then I realized that the knocking was coming from the bathroom next to my bedroom and that clearly wasn’t company. I went to investigate, noticing that Marin’s bed was empty on my way. I found her knocking on the side of the bathtub and completely covered in shampoo. A couple of days later she tp’d the entire bathroom. I usually wake up with her standing by my bed looking at me. Sometimes she’s wearing my glasses at the time. The other day I peeked in at naptime to find her bouncing on her bed wearing a shirt, pull-up and a witch’s hat. I don’t even know where that came from but I think Claire was a witch last year.

Taking Marin out of the house can also be challenging. She always insists on packing a bag, as if we are actually going away for the weekend. I just let her, because it’s easier. I don’t let her take her bag into the store though, because there is a high risk of her leaving the store with more than she started with. Yesterday, I got Marin ready to go to the store and then she jumped up to get her purse. I noticed her putting more stuff in her over-sized Ciderella bag but wasn’t paying much attention. When we got to the store Marin was insisting that she needed to take her bag and I was insisting that she didn’t. It was at that time that I saw that the contents of her purse included a cup of milk and a whoopee cushion. She’s the life of the party already….

Overheard Today in my House

Marin- I poop. I poop. I poop in my unnerwear.

Spring, etc.

Here is my first flower picture of spring. A couple days after that we had a snowstorm, the day before it was 70 degrees. I would guess that I probably wasn’t the only one that wasn’t prepared. Although, I just might have been the only one in the neighborhood attempting to clear six inches of snow off my windshield with an old brochure. Now I understand why the scraper was invented.

I’m glad that spring is finally here. It was a tough cold/flu season at my house. Marin was evaluated by the ENT and is scheduled for a tonsillectomy next month. Her tonsils are huge and she snores like a long-haul trucker, at least what I imagine they must snore like; since clearly, I’m not an expert on trucker snoring.

Back to Marin and her tonsils though, with her family history of problem tonsils and the airway obstruction, they think it’s best to get them out before she starts with the constant infections that plagued her sisters. Marin has been a pretty healthy child in general. She has had some problems with constipation on a fairly regular basis. Fascinating, I know.

Marin is taking antibiotics right now for the tonsillitis. She has only had antibiotics a couple of times. However, she has had probiotics and glycerin suppositories quite a few times. When I took Marin’s first dose of antibiotics to her we had the following conversation.

Me- “Ok, Marin. Here’s your medicine. You need to take it and it will make you feel better.”

Marin-“What that for? Help me poop?”

And it did. She has pooped and pooped. The wonders of antibiotic therapy.... There is a poopy Webkin in the washer right now as we speak.

Really Scary Stuff

I know that my last post was disturbing and basically a downer. I would like to make up for that with something clever and funny but don’t get your hopes up. Instead I’m going to share my weekend trauma.

C had warmed up a bowl of potato soup for Marin while I was busy doing something else. I saw that she had the soup and didn’t think anything about it. Then Marin choked on a potato. I was screaming for C while frantically trying to find a phone to dial 911. Claire was screaming and hysterical, I was panicked and C was doing the Heimlich on my baby. The potato dislodged and then Marin was crying. I have never been so relieved in my entire life.

C has the opinion that I worry too much; neurotic is the term he prefers to use. Normally if he has prepared food for Marin I do an inspection and cut things up smaller. I think it makes a lot more sense to prevent problems, especially problems like choking. I am still upset by the experience and angry that C hasn’t figured out that there is a reason that I cut Marin’s food into tiny bites. After Marin choked, Katie starting cutting up the pieces of potatoes remaining in the bowl. Claire told her that she should have done that before Marin choked. C pointed out to Claire that it wasn’t Katie’s fault. I hope he spent a little bit of time reflecting on exactly whose fault it was.

Marin is fine and doesn’t seem to be nearly as traumatized as I was by the event. She even finished her soup and the potatoes that Katie chopped up into tiny, baby-sized bites. Despite Katie’s calm during the emergency, she was worried, too.

Sick Pediatrician

For all of you parents (and grandparents) out there, read this story about the pediatrician assaulting children while the parents were in another room. It was a two year-old that told her mother what was going on. It's a reminder about being careful who you trust with your kids.

Also Oprah has an two hour long interview with pedophiles available online here.
I'll be back with a regular post tomorrow.